Microsoft Responds to Class Action Lawsuit!

[twesterm]

MrBlack said:

Some of you people really need to lighten up.  I'm pretty certain that there are very few of you can say that you've never downloaded an MP3 off the net or ripped a friends CD in your lifetime.  Most of you probably have hundreds if not thousands of songs you haven't paid for, and many of you have probably emulated old console games on your PC's.  That's piracy too BTW...

 

Yes, back in the day I did download songs and I even downloaded the occassioanl NES and Game Boy rom, but then I realized hey, I was wrong and I'm essentially stealing so I deleted my free songs and my entire 20-ish gigs of music is legal (go go iTunes and CD's).

I firmly believe modders and pirates are absolute scum but I also believe they can change and I'm cool with them if they do.

Now I will admit I am a modded console owner.  And I'm sure many of you will continue to hate and flame like theres no tomorrow, but I want to make it clear that it is not simply all of 'us' that are contributing to the failure of the game industry in any way whatsoever.  In fact, in my case it's just the opposite.  I likely have a larger game collection than 95% of you.  Modding my console to play backups enables me to keep the original copies of my games in mint condition.  The fact that I can play a game and still keep my original sealed preserving its value over time is a huge benefit for me.  It also allows me test out games at will and weed out the ones not deserving of my hard earned cash.  I will do everything I can to make sure I don't waste any more money on packaged trash or broken software.  UBISOFT, YES I'M LOOKING AT YOU!

There are a few key things wrong with this paragraph:

1. I'm going to go ahead and call bullshit on you're just backing games up.  It's nice you're honest about being modder but that doesn't mean I believe you for a second about just modding your console for backups.  I'm sure you could have one of those mythical 360's that breaks a disc after playing it one time, but I just really doubt it for some reason.
2. Saying you keep in your original seal means you never open it?  So that means you can sell the game back (and keep your "backup") and get full money or even if it turns out to be a collectors item you get more for it because you're immoral?  If you're a collecter that's fine, but if you buy a game to play it and then months to years down the line want to sell it or whatever, you need to buy your collectors copy and then your play copy.  Hobbies and collectors hobbies aren't cheap, deal with it.
3. This also implies that you download torrents of games.  I'm sure in your magical world of fairies and rainbows that is perfect everyone else downloads torrents for the same reason but in the real world, you are spreading that game to more people and making it more widely available.  You are part of the problem by making that game easier to get even if you do have some noble purpose in your pirating.
4. If you want to test a game do what you're supposed to do-- download the demo or rent it.  There's no reason you get to make yourself special.

A lot of you are missing a very important point.  It's not just that Microsoft timed these bans to benefit themselves financially, compainies rarely play fair anymore and this doesn't even seem like a legitimate point. Microsoft should have every right in the world to ban you from accessing their Live network for any reason...  it's written clearly in their terms of service.

Actually, you're the one missing the overall point smart guy but hey, though I guess you realize they have every right to ban people from their network.

What seems to me to be up in the air is whether or not M$ had the right to disable non XBOX Live features on the owner's consoles.  Crippling a $200-$480 console by being unable to fully access your legitimately paid for games on it is bad enough, but disabling built in options that came included with the console such as the ability to access your home network or your HDD installations seems to be one step too far IMO.

It's not up in the air, read the terms of use.  If you don't want to risk the punishment, don't do the crime as they say.  If you just want to play your legitimate game there's absolutely no need to mod your 360 (and yes, that means your above reasons to "backup" your games is bullshit).

The transfer of information regarding the modded consoles was also done largely unbeknownst to the console's owners as well.  This is another point the lawsuit brings up, but if you signed up for Live and skipped over the TOS disclosure I guess that's your own fault.  Personally, I don't like the idea of living in a world where the companies we do business are able to corner us into allowing them monitor and take action on our every move.

So you're mad you have to read a contract before you sign it?  Do you just blindly sign anything?  Anyone who mods their console knows they're doing something wrong, it's their own damn fault for not reading the ToS and modding the console.\

I'd like to see M$ lose big on this one, I really would.  But I also think it seems hignly unlikely that anything will come of it.  They have plenty of $ and power so they really don't have to play by the rules anyways.  I'd just like to point out that all gamers will eventually lose out from this sort of behavior, and if it's allowed to continue there will only be more and more restrictions put in place to limit what we can do with our toys.

Why would you like to them to fail at the lawsuit? 

And all gamers will lose out by this?  No, again your missing a pretty major point, piracy destroys the games industry bit by bit so gamers win when a major blow like this has been dealt.  The people that poured years of blood, sweat, and tears (even those people at Ubisoft who you seem to hate) get to go on getting payed for their work instead of little snots playing their "backups" because they're too fucking cheap to pay for a game, or they want to stick it to da man, or they want to prove a point, or whatever other bullshit reason pirates use to justify their activity that is destroying the game industry.

Also, this article.